Some Colorado Videos

I'm trying out You Tube to host some videos. from the recent Colorado hike. I'm not sure how much I like it, and it takes FOREVER to upload, but I think it's pretty decent.

Check this one out:

In this video, I am making my way along the ridgeline of Mt Yale as it starts to hail on us above 14,000 ft. I had to put my camera away pretty quick because it's not waterproof, but you get the idea. This ridgeline is literally a straight drop on both sides, and though it's pretty timid here, you have to use all 4 limbs at times to stay on the face of the mountain, and the wet rocks don't help :)

I know that a friend had a water proof camera, I can't wait to see what he was able to record.

In this video, i just do a quick 360 from the top of Mt Huron, another 14ner in Colorado.

More videos on my youtube account.

Monsoon

I went outside yesterday afternoon to find that it was pouring rain. Normally I wouldn't care at all, except today I was supposed to help Katie move. and most stuff doesn't like to get wet :)

So after work, I decided I would swing by the store and pick up some trash bags, so that we could try to keep as much dry as possible. After 2 hours or being stuck in traffic, and going less than 3 miles total, I decided to park and walk the remaining half a mile to Safeway.

I found that the street was flooded up to my knees at some points, and entire roads had been shut down because of flooding: which explains the traffic :) I made it to the safeway only to find that they had no power, and closed early. I'll tell you what though: I haven't had a good excuse to play in a puddle for a long time, so it wasn't all bad.

For those of you who think my shoes are funny, I have one thing to say:

:-p

Here is a quick shot from rural and broadway:

Colorado

I spent the last week chilling in Colorado. I went backpacking for 5 days, and spent the weekend before and after in the city. The backpacking trip covered about 55 miles and over 12,000 ft vertical, and it was a blast.

Here is a quick photo from the trip:

Taken from Lake Ann Pass, Collegiate Peak Wilderness Area, CO
July 24, 2007

Here is a link to all the photos (there are way too many, and I have to sort through them still :-)

On a funny note, we took the bus to boulder, and spent the day hanging out there, when I saw something great for my brothers, Mike & Al. The two of them have been trying to make the perfect pizza, and I saw just the thing to help them get there... Guys you just need to build one of these:

Also, those are real Italians running it... so they might have a natural advantage.

Breaking in the Boots

I bought some new boots for the CDT hike, since I noticed the soles on my old ones were starting to wear through.

I used the opportunity to try out some different types of leg braces, and get a little more endurance training in before I ship out.

I tried two new leg braces. The one I found for my left knee worked great. It is a band that wraps around your leg just at the base of the knee cap. It holds the kneecap up so that it isn't rubbing on the tendon behind it all day long. I worked great.

The second kind I tried (on the right knee) was for the IT band (connecting your knee and thigh on the outside) It did nothing :-/ Maybe I was wearing it wrong, I'm not sure.

The hike was good though overall. I carried a 45lb pack to try to reproduce what we will be encountering, and I think it went pretty good. It was way hotter here than it will be in Colorado, but the altitude is much lower, so you win some, you loose some.

I was very lucky during this hike, and I hit a number of great views because of the clouds. I've included a few here.

The Wrath of the Mailman

For those of you who are following the mail man situation, here is a nice follow up. Yesterday, I gt home from work, and saw the wrath of the mailman!

This is not for the faint of heart... so please make your children close their eyes.

Here is is; The Wrath of the mail man!

Taken July 17, 2007
in front of my house

Ok, so maybe it was just the wind, or the garbage man set it down wrong, or whatever... but maybe it was the wrath of the mail man... So just in case, I decided to trim my bush this morning. I wouldn't want the mail man to get too ticked off, he does have a lot of power after all, imagine how much a mail man could hurt you... He could just throw away those tax documents, and bills, and before you know it you could be in a tough situation. Probably better to work with the system on this one :)

Geocaching Troubles :-/

I was testing out some new features that I'm working on with the Geocache Navigator, so I decided to try to find a cache at Lunch.

For those of you who aren't nerdy enough to know what Geocaching is (Good for you!), this might not make any sense :) For those of you who do, THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS

I was trying to find I'll trade ya! and I couldn't find it for the life of me. This is the second cache in two days that I have just not been able to find. I would like to blame the heat, but I don't think that would be fair :)

Here is the rough area of the cache... there are a few good places to hide one

I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be in with the palm trees. The hint was "Van Accessible"... and I think I figured out what that ment :)

but all I found was a bunch of liter. The last cache that I couldn't find was also surrounded by liter. I'm thinking that I didn't find them because there was so much trash around... like I didn't want to sift through all the trash to find the cache :) I really don't remember liter being a problem when geocaching before... Is it getting worse?

Going Postal

Photo of my mail box:

Photo of a note found in my mailbox July 5, 2007:

Photo of note found in my mailbox July 14, 2007:

I'm going to come back and comment more on this after lunch, but how funny! :) I think they should check this mail man out before he goes postal!

...

Sorry, either that was a long lunch, or I'm a day late getting back to this :)

So I got this letter from the mail man, telling me that my bush was interfering with the delivery of my mail. So I took a close look at the bush, and I couldn't see what he meant. I couldn't get the bush to interfere with the mail box at all. So I didn't change it.

So now, I am not getting my mail :)

It is odd though... my bush now appears to be dying, and I can't help but think that there is some sort of funny business going on :) Did the mail man poison my bush? Can you feel the anger in his last note? He's so mad that you can hardly even read it. Just compare the handwriting from the original to the latest :) wow.

I decided that there are 3 options:

1. Trim the bush back a bit
2. Leave the bush, and talk to someone at the post office about it
   
3. rip out the bush, run it through a wood chipper, and stuff the chips into the mailbox.

If anyone has any suggestions, let me know by posting a comment!

White Lies

Always try to be honest.

When you lie, or even when you are misunderstood and choose not to correct it, you put yourself in a situation where you either loose credibility, or are forced to dig a deeper whole by covering it up.

Covering it up of course is done by lying more, and more, each time growing in severity in order to cover all of your previous lies.

For those of you who know chronic liars, I feel your pain. I deal with at least one chronic liar more than once a week, and it's excruciating. Every time their lies get bigger, and I have to bight my lip to not call them out. one the rare occasion that I do ask questions about the lies, I'm either hit with bigger cover up lies, or they just change the subject.

I think that it is our pride that tricks us into continuing to lie, rather than admit that we were incorrect or misunderstood earlier. And this pride is much stronger when you feel threatened by those you lie too. I wish we could all somehow leave our pride out of life.

Good Morning

There was a very pretty cloud cover this morning, that started the morning off very nicely. But alas, I was still heading into work :(

I was running out of gas, so I had to stop here:

but I really wanted to be here:

This morning started on the right foot... I would try to stay on the right foot all day, but my balance is really no good, and I'm afraid I would fall over if I tried to hop along on one foot all day.

More American Than Me

Let me apologize before you even start reading... I'm all over the board on this one. A.D.D. maybe?

So, I was on my way into work today, and I saw this guy working on some landscaping. He caught my eye because of his American bandanna. He probably just got it 50% off after the 4th of July, but it made me think about the recent immigration attention... I don't think that this man is less American than me. He might even be more American than me.

Taken on 48th st South of Guadalupe
July 9th 2007

Now he's not enlisted in the army or anything, he's not risking his life, but he is doing a job for a more competitive rate than the rest of us would be willing to do it for. And while most of us are in a panic about securing our borders to prevent illegal immigration, illegal immigrants are busy doing the work that we feel we're too good to do, or we wouldn't get paid enough to do.

America is a nation, founded on the idea of freedom. This freedom is what we should be looking to protect, not the purity of our nation.

I think that most people (mostly white people) are more worried about the color of the skin that makes up America's population. I think that too many white people are afraid that America will become brown. Here's an idea: if you're so afraid of being outnumbered, STOP KILLING YOUR BABIES.

I think that the mentality that allows people to kill their own children, is in fact the same mentality that creates fear of minority growth. It's this idea that you need to fit into a picture perfect image in order to achieve happiness: One boy, one girl, in a safe, white neighborhood, with a picket fence, and the nicest house on the block.

Not only is this wrong, it's disastrous. Once you step all over people to try to gain this theoretical happiness, and once you have everything on your list, you'll realize that is didn't bring you any happiness was anyway. All you've done is destroy the happiness of others to get there. And once you're there, and still unhappy, you will start to become depressed, questioning the point of life, and consider suicide. which brings up another good idea: STOP KILLING YOURSELVES.

To be honest, I would prefer a world where we embrace a free market... capitalism..., and let the best, and cheapest have the job. If you are afraid that you're job can be done better and cheaper by someone else, than you'd better improve. Don't worry about protecting your cushy job that you are under qualified for, worry about improving, and being all that you can be. and Maybe you'll find happiness along the way.

4th of July 2007

Happy Independance Day!

Today is the fourth of july, and I thought I was being tricky by going up to prescott for a few days. I figured I'd escape the heat a little bit... unfortunatly it is hot even up here. I'm told it's supposed to be about 20 degrees cooler up here. All I know is that if that's true, the people in phoenix are way worse off :)

But whether it's cold, hot, rainy, or dry, I hope that everyone has a nice relaxing independance day. Enjoy your freedom. :-p

Taken at My Parents Condo in Prescott, AZ
July 4, 2007

Humphrey's Peak

Katie pointed out that I was a little late on my post this morning (Thanks for the kick, I appreciate it). I've been annotating the Humphrey's Peak hike me and my dad did this weekend.

Taken on Humphrey's Peak, AZ
June 30, 2007

here is what I have so far:

I hope to have it polished up soon, but I'm distracted by the planning of a Prescott Hike for Katie and I to do tomorrow morning.

Humphrey's peak was pretty cool. It had crowds like you would see in phoenix on trails like squaw peak, or camelback mountain, but it was certainly more difficult. You start at the bottom of the snow bowl ski resort, cross the slope once, and enter the woods. You stay in the woods for miles, and you don't exit it, until you rise above the tree line. The trees of the woods provide great protection from the sun, and from the wind. The ground is very solid, but gentle on your knees.

Once you cross the tree line (at around 11,500 ft) you start to get plenty of views, but you also get a lot of sun, a lot of wind, and very loose rocky ground that makes for much more difficult hiking. around every corner is another false summit, and you constantly feel like you are being tricked. As you rise higher and higher, the air starts to thin. I had a pretty decent time ajusting, but my heart rate did start to rise faster than normal, and it was no uncommon to get a little dizzy from time to time. generally a quick break would cure the symptoms.

Once you get to the top (after about 3,500 ft) you get a view for hundreds of miles. The wind are pretty wild, but there are some rock piles that provide good shelter from it.

Check out the video:


Over all it's a great hike, and If I lived in flagstaff, I would hike it frequently. (at least to the tree line)

The weekend

Sorry guys, I forgot my camera at home this morning :-/

Today I'm taking off work a little early for two reasons:

1. Katie left her car at my house and it has a flat tire that I want to replace
2. We're heading up North, and I need to finish packing

So, Katie has been out of town all week, and she left her car at my house. She seems to have a slow leak on the back passenger side tire (which she had repaired, but that apparently didn't work). Anyway, she's getting home today, and I just noticed that it was completely flat. :( I really don't want her to come home to a flat tire, so I'm going to either get it repaired/replaced, or just put the donut on, depending on time. I'm guessing I'll be pushing it, so it will probably be the donut.

After I take care of that, I'm packing up and heading up to flagstaff. Me, my dad, and my brother John are going up to hike Humphreys peak, via Humphrey's Trail at Snow bowl. I originally wanted to make it a 2 day hike, going through the wilderness area from the other side via Weatherford Trail, but time didn't allow for it, and people didn't want to carry that much gear. For this hike, I will plan to carry water, snacks, lunch, a jacket, some hiking poles, and a beanie. I really think hiking poles are dorky, but I've been repeatedly told that they are a necessity, so I'm going to try to get used to them on this trail ans see if they help much.

I had a really hard time finding good trail data for this hike, so I decided I would have to record our trip, and publish it online. You should be able to see it online before Monday. I'll post a link by then. Here are the four sites I'm working off of:

• http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/coconino/recreation/peaks/humphreys-tr.shtml
• http://www.toddshikingguide.com/Hikes/Arizona/Coconino/Coconino6.htm
• http://www.surgent.net/highpoints/az/coconino.html
• http://americasroof.com/az.shtml

If all goes well with this hike, and if time allows, I think I'm going to try to do a follow up trip and hike to the summit again via Weatherford Trail.

Pretty Random: Misc/Knees/Root Canal

Sticking with the idea of posting a photo daily, Here is one for today:

Taken at the office
June 28, 2007

There is nothing interesting about this photo... it's of a fountain in front of the office, because I forgot my camera at the office and couldn't take a photo of anything better :-p I'm really starting to get boring with my photos. I will plan to get much more interesting next week. :-p

The idea of the photo-a-day thing is not really about the photo, it's about forcing a routine. Tricking myself into continuing to write a blog for anyone who happens to be bored enough to read it :)

On another note, I started using the workout room at Al's condo, and I did like 40 minutes on the stair machine, followed by stretches, followed by a lot of leg extensions on a small weight, and today my knees are really feeling a lot better. I'm going to try to do it a little more often and see if the problem goes away. My theory is that your quadriceps have four muscles, and some of those parts don't get isolated in your natural workouts. I'm hoping that if I isolate them in the gym, they will do a better job of holding my knee together the rest of the time. :) I'll keep you posted on the results.

As a follow up to the Root Canal, I have nothing to report... I'm really feeling fine so far. I can't really put a lot of pressure on the tooth yet, but it doesn't hurt if I don't chew on it. So far, so good.

CDT: Rough Route

Last week, I got the rough start and stop points for the CDT hike I'll be doing.

Here are the details:

Start: Cottonwood Pass Road
End: South Clear Creek TH
Distance: 45 miles
total elevation gain: 9,790 ft

I did a quick rough trace of the route we're taking, from a book I'm reading. I think everything should be within a few hundred feet. The switchbacks look pretty awful, but the book claims to have them wrong anyway.

Map of our route
Elevation Profile of the route
Google Earth file (kml) of the route
*you do need to sign up for a free account to download the kml though.

This could be a tough little hike... the elevation is the scariest part :-)

Root Canal

Sorry I'm late on my post this morning... I was at the dentist, and it went a little longer than expected.

In 1998, I had a deep cavity on my number 14 tooth (one of the top left molars), and when it was drilled, a nerve was exposed. That tooth has been trouble ever since.

The original plan for today was to go in, and redo the filling, as a new cavity was starting to emerge where the old one had filled. But after taking X-rays, my dentist decided it would be best to do a root canal, since one of the nerves appeared to be infected.

Root Canals are not as painful as they depict them on T.V., though I suppose the drugs might not have worn off yet. Also, I suppose some people get them when the problem is worse, and it probably hurts a lot more.

Anyway, Since I was late on my post, I decided I would have to get something real good... so I got this:

Taken at Mountain Park Dentistry (on 48th st and Chandler)
By Doctor Randy Mow, using a small optical camera
June 27, 2008

What you are looking at, is my number 14 tooth, hollowed out. Each of the dark spots is where they drilled deep into the tooth to remove the nerves of the tooth.

Unfortunately there were some time issues due to a file breaking while inside of the tooth, and needing to be removed. Near the end the drugs started to wear off, and the open tooth started to cause some major pain. Due to time constraints, they have temporarily filled it, and will need to follow up to remove the temporary filling, and do the permanent one.

Thanks to the crew at Mountain Park Dentistry, and Dr. Mow for this super cool view of the tooth that most of us never get to see.

I'm Tired

I don't know if it's the heat, something health-related, or what, but I've been so tired the last few weeks...

Maybe it's all of this:

Taken at the Office
June 26, 2007

Maybe I should take a break from the coffee, and see if that does anything. I think I should plan to wait a week or two after my current stash runs out, before I buy more. Maybe that will make a difference.

In other news. Al turned 26 yesterday. I was over at his house for the first time in a long while, and it looks great. It's come quite a long way from where it was in august. He should be proud of what he's been able to do to that place.

Last night Lucy made diner at Al's place, and all the family came over. It was pretty nice. I took off early to catch up on sleep, but it didn't seem to do a lot of good. :)

Wienermobile

So I was driving into work today, because through some fluke, both of my bikes are at the office now :) On my way in though, I saw a funny sign in my rear-view mirror... Check it out.

Taken on Priest, South of Southern
June 25, 2007

Photos from June 22, 2007

Last night, at the brew conference, the Goo Goo Dolls played on the runway of an aircraft carrier. It was pretty cool, but it was really weird. Everyone there just kinda stood still. It was a little weird...

Anyway, here are some photos

The Goo Goo Dolls
Taken one the USS Midway
June 21, 2007

Also, I was impressed how well my sprint card was working at the hotel... then I saw this, and I left Tricked:

Taken at the hotel
June 22, 2007

Photo from June 21, 2007

San Diego is very pretty... I wish I had a little more time to explore. I'll try to get out of the hotel a little bit today, and tomorrow morning.

For today, here is a quick shot from the balcony I'm sitting at, drinking coffee.

Taken at the Hyatt in San Diego
June 21, 2007